AFL stars and their controversial connections
FOOTY stars have fraternised with gangsters for as long as the game itself, but should being able to kick a footy mean you have to say goodbye to lifelong friends?
Melbourne
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VICTORIANS love to put their AFL stars up on a pedestal.
But that fame often means friendships and family ties with some controversial members of the community are brought into the spotlight.
Here are some of the colourful relationships that have landed players in trouble over the years.
Dusty’s daddy issues
Tiger’s midfielder Dustin Martin’s family links made headlines when his dad Shane’s alleged involvement with the Rebels motorcycle gang saw him booted back to New Zealand.
Shane Martin was sensationally kicked out of the country when the Federal Government declared he had failed to meet the minimum character requirements to remain in Australia.
Shane Martin continues to play a major role in his son’s life, with the Richmond club champion flying out just last week to visit.
Cousins close to big time crime
Always lurking in the background of the Ben Cousins drama was the 2005 Brownlow Medallist’s close association with prominent crime identity John Kizon.
The convicted heroin trafficker had a strong bond with Cousins and his West Coast teammate Michael Gardiner.
Cousins’ drug addiction which is still causing him trouble, led to him being banned from football and more recently sentenced to a year behind bars.
After being spotted socialising with Cousins and Gardiner during one grand final week in Melbourne, Kizon said the relationship was “purely social” and not business related.
He released a statement through his lawyer saying he knew the two players on a social basis as he did a lot of sportsmen in Perth and his meeting was “purely coincidental”.
Gardiner continued his career with St Kilda where he played in the drawn 2010 Grand Final, then married and settled in Melbourne.
Cousins was last month jailed for 12 months over stalking and drugs charges.
Just tattoo of us
Former Tiger Jake King’s friendship with former Bandidos enforcer Toby Mitchell is another example of footy friendships that are frowned upon, despite the pair growing up together.
King famously came under fire for bringing his colourful mate into the Richmond changerooms after a game.
But the “push-up king” didn’t bow to the club’s hierarchy, maintaining his friendship and even buying into Mitchell’s South Melbourne tattoo business when he retired from the game while the former bikie served 10 months in jail.
The biochemist and the Essendon doping scandal
Convicted drug trafficker Shane Charter may have been the man who supplied former Essendon sports scientist Stephen Dank with supplements at the centre of the club’s doping scandal.
Arrested and found in possession of 100,000 pseudoephedrine-based tablets in 2004, Charter pleaded guilty and received a reduced prison sentence.
The man known to many as “Doctor Ageless” reportedly provided former coach James Hird with dietary advice during his playing days and was later credited with being the architect for Shane Woewodin’s 2000 Brownlow success.
Woewodin has never been accused of being involved in illegal substances or practices.
Former bikie enforcer Toby Mitchell became a client of Charter’s after being shot seven times in two failed assassination attempts in 2011 and 2013.
Dank’s drive by shooting
The former sports scientist embroiled in the Essendon doping saga was grazed by a bullet during a drive by shooting on his home last year.
Dank has been widely criticised for his role in the saga and his failure to co-operate with authorities investigating the injecting of players.
He has also been involved a number of failed businesses and lawsuits.
The Armed Crime Squad is still investigating the shooting and won’t be drawn on a possible motive.
Pies powerbroker was thick with thieves
The most infamous operator of illegal gambling in the city was the legendary Collingwood powerbroker John Wren.
The Magpies enjoyed their most dominant times under the influence of Wren.
The powerful businessman, political kingmaker and underworld figure went to his grave weeks after suffering a heart attack watching his beloved Magpies win the 1953 premiership.
As the title of Frank Hardy’s controversial book Power Without Glory aptly encapsulated his role, Wren was indeed the power behind the Magpies in the first half of the 20th century.
Gangitano, Gatto and the Collingwood connection
In more recent times, underworld figures Alphonse Gangitano and Mick Gatto have had strong links at Collingwood.
Gangitano, the cold-blooded killer who met poetic justice in Melbourne’s bloody underworld war in 1998, was a school friend of Magpie player and 1990 premiership administrator Graeme “Gubby” Allan.
They maintained a close friendship throughout Allan’s time at Collingwood even though it was frowned on by some key personnel at the club.
On the eve of the 1990 flag, an underworld betting racket involving Gangitano even embroiled Magpie champion Peter Daicos, the Herald Sun reported in May 2009.
Feared standover man Gangitano was chasing an unnamed Magpie over unpaid bets.
Daicos denied he was the player who owed the money but admitted to helping a teammate who did owe cash to colourful identity Mick Gatto.
“It was all to do with horse racing and Mick Gatto owned the book,” Daicos told the Herald Sun’s Mick Warner.
Gatto, an avid Collingwood supporter, admitted to running a betting operation in 1990 but denied ever being owed money by a Magpie footballer.
Didak’s wild ride with CBD killer
Magpie star Alan Didak is one footballer who found himself in hot water after associating with a criminal.
During a wild seven-hour drinking binge with Didak in 2008, bikie Christopher Wayne Hudson fired shots from a car window.
His police statement revealed that the pair met during a chance encounter at King St strip club the Spearmint Rhino.
Hudson had recognised Didak and bought him a drink.
The pair spoke for up to an hour about football before Didak said he needed to go home and Hudson offered to take him.
Didak said they jumped into Hudson’s “pretty schmick’’ Mercedes but instead of heading home he was driven towards the bikie clubhouse.
The footballer and the bikie had more drinks at the bikie clubhouse before heading back to the city with another passenger.
Collingwood placed Didak on strict contract obligations after the incident, including a nightclub curfew.
Six days later Hudson killed a man and seriously wounded another in the Melbourne CBD.
He was sentenced to 35 years in jail for the murder of solicitor Brendan Keilar and the attempted murder of Dutch tourist Paul de Waard in the CBD shootings.
The Blues and the Carlton Crew
The Magpies archrival Carlton might have a reputation as the silvertail club backed by prime ministers and big businessmen, but the Blues have also had their own strong underworld support.
The Carlton Crew was the name given to the mob of gangsters who were major players in Melbourne’s notorious shooting war that claimed the lives of 36 underworld figures from the late nineties.
The nomenclature might well have been assigned because of the football club that was so strongly supported by most of the gang’s principals.
The Moran brothers Mark and Jason, Mario Condello, Graham Kinniburgh and the like all died in a hail of bullets during the gangland war.
But during the footy season, they would regularly be spotted with their associates in the grandstand terrace at Princes Park — dressed in customary heavy overcoats and dark sunglasses — watching their favourite Blueboys train while doing their wheeler-dealing.
Carlton’s 1938 premiership centre half-forward Jack Wrout was the uncle of Bert Wrout who was shot in a Brunswick bar when Mark and Jason’s father Lewis Moran was gunned down.
Deep criminal connections went to the top
The link with the club went deeper than that — the Moran home was the boarding house for several Carlton stars.
They included AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick and the brilliant Peter Bosustow when they came over as young recruits from Western Australia.
Late Carlton stalwart Leo Brooks was the father of crime matriarch Judy Moran and grandfather of brothers Mark and Jason.
He was a life member of the club, serving for 30 years as Carlton’s head doorman and odd-jobs man.
Brooks was also a father figure to interstate and country recruits and is said to have played an integral part in Fitzpatrick’s recruitment.
In their younger days, the Moran boys would often be in the changerooms at Carlton accompanied by their grandfather.
Heavies held onto Carlton’s grand prize
A month after Brooks died the Moran clan’s influence at the club was on show after the gangland slaying of Mark Moran.
The 1982 Carlton premiership flag was sought by the family and lent for the funeral.
The flag was draped over the coffin and Moran’s wake was held at the club rooms at Princes Park.
But the flag was not returned and when football manager Col Kinnear requested it back from the family, he was firmly turned down.
Kinnear persevered under considerable duress and it all got quite nasty. Officials weren’t game to ask for it back and for many years the flag was missing and Carlton even contemplated approaching the league for a replacement.
Then someone finally plucked up the courage to reclaim it.
Jacko, Capper and Chopper
Bosustow and two equally flamboyant footballers Warwick Capper and Mark Jackson later teamed up with notorious criminal Chopper Read.
The Buzz said that in order to help make ends meet after his footy career ended in the mid-1980s, he had to leave his young family in the West to join the interstate speaking circuit.
It included Read, Capper and Jackson.
The relationship between Capper and Read apparently went sour. Chopper claimed on his deathbed that they had fallen out over compensation for a sex tape made involving Capper.
Heavy’s threat to kill ‘King’ Carey
Jason Moran threatened to kill Wayne Carey in a bar at the height of the controversial North Melbourne champion’s football career in the mid-1990s.
Carey, who had already been in court for a similar offence, grabbed a woman on the breast in the bar notorious for criminal activity and drug-taking.
“Do that again and I’ll kill you,” said Moran who happened to be with the woman.
The footballer backed down and later became a close mate of Moran.
When Moran was in court in 2000, Carey gave character evidence for him.
And Carey continued to associate in the company of drug dealers and criminal elements with the club waving a blind eye and often bailing out its greatest player.
On-field honour for murdered ‘Tuppence’
Carlton midfielder Brock McLean has never been backward in airing his feelings and beliefs and he did so when Des “Tuppence” Moran, whom he was close to was also gunned down.
Then playing for Melbourne, McLean took the field wearing a black armband to honour the slain underworld figure.
Melbourne was unaware that McLean would choose to honour the last of the Moran men to die, but said it was up to the individual in such circumstances.
McLean said he had known Moran from childhood as he was a close friend of his uncle, former Richmond and Carlton footballer Ricky McLean.
He said he had shared a beer with him three weeks before his death.
Former Richmond and Essendon player Ty Zantuck was also a friend of the Morans and attended the funeral of Lewis Moran in 2004.
Squizzy did it
Champion South Melbourne full-forward Bob Pratt was sensationally hit by a truck on the eve of the 1935 Grand Final and forced to miss the game.
Without Pratt, who had booted six goals to beat Collingwood in the second semi-final, the Bloods lost the flag to the Magpies by 20 points.
Many years later Pratt, who could be prone to stretch the truth, pointed the finger at notorious Melbourne gangster Squizzy Taylor for being behind the incident.
However, Taylor was unable to verify the claim, as he had died in 1927.
Playing dead
There was no doubting a match-fixing scandal in the 1910 finals series when two Carlton players were suspended for playing dead.
The players, Alex Lang and Doug Fraser, who were suspected of having also being involved in rigging the previous grand final, were left out of the Blues grand final line-up and later suspended for 99 games.
The Magpies went on to win that first premiership clash between the two titans but the hand of the illegal SP bookmaker industry operating on football was all over the match-fixing.
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